<?php
/**
 * <https://y.st./>
 * Copyright © 2017 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
 * 
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 * along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Moths',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		Over the past three or so days, I&apos;ve been seeing countless pantry moths in my apartment.
		It&apos;s been baffling me to no end.
		I get rid of a larva, then an hour or so later, I find another one nearby!
		The fully-grown moths have been showing up less frequently, but they&apos;re definitely here.
		But how has this been happening!?
		I&apos;ve been so careful!
		My mother always had an infestation when I lived with her, and I swore I&apos;d never let that happen at my place.
		I&apos;ve been storing al my food that they can possibly get into in the refrigerator and freezer, away from reach.
		A while back, I found a single moth here, but it probably flew in the window from a neighbour&apos;s place or something, as I haven&apos;t seen any since then until recently.
		Today, I found the source: a hidden box of breakfast cereal.
		It was one of two hidden beneath a pair of pants in a box sent over by my mother when Vivian visited.
		I hadn&apos;t gone through it yet, and I didn&apos;t know the cereal was there.
		She unintentionally sent me part of her infestation.
		Joy.
		I can&apos;t say for sure the second box of cereal isn&apos;t contaminated too; it&apos;s got some strange gangly crumbs that are more than likely caught in tiny moth webs.
		I&apos;ve removed both boxes from my home though, and I&apos;ll continue exterminating the moths one by one as I see them.
		Now without a food source, they should soon starve and be gone.
	</p>
	<p>
		The parent of the on-site manager gave me a small table and two stools today.
		That was nice of them!
		A neighbour also claims that from afar, the couch on my front porch doesn&apos;t look like leather.
		I&apos;ll need to haul it down so they can check it out soon, but if it turns out not to be leather, I can haul it back up and keep it instead of getting rid of it.
	</p>
	<p>
		My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="university">
	<h2>University life</h2>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve gotten my main assignment and the beginnings of my discussion assignments completed today.
		I wish the beginning of the week wasn&apos;t so hectic though.
		I&apos;d love to have had these discussion posts turned in already.
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			The reading assignment didn&apos;t reference any articles, so I assume that when this discussion assignment says to use one of the referenced website articles, it&apos;s actually meaning to use the referenced $a[PDF] textbook material.
			I apologise if I got that wrong and there were actually some referenced Web articles that I somehow missed.
		</p>
		<p>
			One of the most powerful things about virtualisation is the capacity to give multiple programs access to the same shared resource without any of those programs needing to know how to share with the other programs that may or may not be running at the time.
			This allows multiple programs to run practically simultaneously, even if they may need access to a resource that the machine only has one of.
			The operating system abstracts away the real resource and provides the applications each with a virtual resource of the needed type.
			For example, if the program needs $a[CPU] time, it&apos;s given access to a virtual $a[CPU] instead of being given direct access to the real $a[CPU] (Arpaci-Dusseau &amp; Arpaci-Dusseau, 2016).
		</p>
		<p>
			Another incredibly powerful application of virtualisation is isolation.
			Different applications each run using different virtual resources (Arpaci-Dusseau &amp; Arpaci-Dusseau, 2016), effectively making each one run in its own separate little box.
			This means that applications aren&apos;t able to bump into each other, accidentally or intentionally, by way of (for example) overwriting the values stored in each other&apos;s memory addresses.
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h2>References:</h2>
			<p>
				Arpaci-Dusseau, R. H., &amp; Arpaci-Dusseau, A. C. (2016, July 20). Introduction to Operating Systems. Retrieved from <a href="http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/intro.pdf"><code>http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/intro.pdf</code></a>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Governments spy on us because they don&apos;t care about our rights and they want to make their jobs easier.
			They trample on our right to privacy in an effort to speed the process of finding and stopping criminals.
			If governments had to actually get warrants to spy on us, they&apos;d have to put in a lot more effort to fight crime.
			That said, fighting crime and protecting the rights of their citizens <strong>*is their job*</strong>.
			Yes, it takes more effort to do both, but it&apos;s the right thing for them to do.
			In my country, the United States, the main government organisation that spies on citizens both of our own country and other countries is the $a[NSA].
			Much of their spying breaks our fourth amendment rights (Johnson, 2017), and is therefore illegal.
			One tool they employ is dragnet surveillance (Buttar, 2015), which gathers up all data they can get their hands on even without any cause for suspicion.
			Billions of innocent people are being spied on without so much as a thought that they might be guilty, let alone an actual court-approved warrant.
		</p>
		<p>
			Corporations spy on us because they don&apos;t care about our rights and they want to make even more ridiculously-high amounts of money than they already do.
			Here&apos;s the thing about many companies that spy on you and mine your data: you&apos;re not their customers, you&apos;re their <strong>*product*</strong> (Elgan, 2009)!
			They&apos;re selling <strong>*you*</strong> to advertisers, and these advertisers are their real customers.
			Other companies mine your data for their own purposes: they want to better know the intimate details of your product-consumption habits and other metrics so they can better push their products your way and convince you to buy them!
			Any company that&apos;s spying on you isn&apos;t doing it for you.
			They&apos;ll often try to phrase it in such a way that it sounds like a valuable service they&apos;re providing, but it never is.
			It&apos;s just a way for them to boost their own bottom line at your expense.
		</p>
		<p>
			Stopping governments from spying on us will be difficult.
			But what power do we hold over them?
			One important thing we can do is to make sure to vote for public officials that promise to clean up this situation.
			We can&apos;t be sure they&apos;ll follow through, but if they don&apos;t, we can elect someone else next time.
			Beyond that, our greatest defence is to be careful with our data.
			Always encrypt when possible (for example, use $a[PGP] for email and $a[HTTPS] for Web traffic) and use open proxies.
			Some people recommend $a[VPN]s for privacy, but I avoid using those.
			The fact is that the $a[VPN] provider is able to spy on you the same as the government, but they now also have your legal name and credit card details!
			The $a[VPN] might even forward a copy of all your traffic to a government organisation making it even <strong>*easier*</strong> for them to spy on you.
			You haven&apos;t protected yourself when you use a $a[VPN], you&apos;ve only shifted where your vulnerability lies.
			Instead, you need a proxy that doesn&apos;t know who you are, and you need to chain proxies together.
			An easy way to do this, and what I personally use for <strong>*all*</strong> my Internet traffic, is $a[Tor].
			$a[Tor] puts you behind three proxies, and your traffic is wrapped in a triple layer of encryption so only the final proxy even knows what you&apos;re sending.
			The first proxy knows where you are, but not who you&apos;re communicating with, what you&apos;re saying, or who knows the unknown details.
			The second proxy knows who knows where you are and who knows who you&apos;re communicating with and what you&apos;re saying, but doesn&apos;t actually know any details of the conversation and who&apos;s involved.
			It only knows who would know these things.
			And finally, the final proxy knows what&apos;s being said (unless further encryption is used, and it always should be when possible) and who you&apos;re communicating with, but has no idea who or where you are.
			This three-layer proxy system keeps any one party from being to piece together much about any traffic passing through the network.
		</p>
		<p>
			Stopping corporations from spying on us would be <strong>*much*</strong> easier, but only if <strong>*we all work together*</strong>.
			Companies such as Facebook and Google <strong>*depend*</strong> on us willingly handing over our data to them.
			And when we don&apos;t, they refuse us service until we comply.
			Because most people comply, they stay in business with this model and people that don&apos;t want to comply are forced to either comply anyway or not be served.
			However, what if we all refused to comply?
			Their entire business model would fall apart.
			They&apos;d be forced to either find a new way to do business or go out of business.
			I do my part by not using any service that maliciously discriminates against $a[Tor] users or needlessly demands personal information.
			Will you join me and do the same?
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h2>References:</h2>
			<p>
				Buttar, S. (2015, December 25). Dragnet NSA Spying Survives: 2015 in Review | Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved from <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/dragnet-nsa-spying-survives-2015-review"><code>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/dragnet-nsa-spying-survives-2015-review</code></a>
			</p>
			<p>
				Elgan, M. (2009, February 5). Google&apos;s Business Model: YOU Are the Product - Datamation. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.datamation.com/columns/executive_tech/article.php/3801006/Googles-Business-Model-YOU-Are-the-Product.htm"><code>http://www.datamation.com/columns/executive_tech/article.php/3801006/Googles-Business-Model-YOU-Are-the-Product.htm</code></a>
			</p>
			<p>
				Johnson, T. (2017, May 26). Court rebukes NSA over surveillance of U.S. citizens | Miami Herald. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article152948259.html"><code>http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article152948259.html</code></a>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="docmod">
	<h2>Document modifications</h2>
	<p>
		On <a href="/en/weblog/2018/01-January/16.xhtml#Vivian">2018-01-16</a>, my sister, Vivian, requested that I replace all instances of her legal name in my journal with the name &quot;Vivian&quot;.
		She also asked that the name of the organisation she works for be redacted.
		This page was modified to fulfil that request.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
